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Hi everyone
I visit approx. 20 places a day, often new places. it takes me ages to plan it.
does any one know of any mapping software that I can just put in addresses and my starting point, and it will plan the best route for my day?
thanks in advance.
haha
any more solutions please 🙂
I currently put all my addresses on a printed map and number them
then I just roughly choose a route.
it doesnt have to be mileage accurate, just the shortest route, not taking account any google traffic
thanks Jambo
Simply send a parcel via DHL to every address on your list with next day delivery, then wait overnight at the DHL depot, and follow the driver as he makes his drops.
I dont want to get lots of parking tickets, work till 20:00 and break my stuff.
good idea though
Just use google maps and ‘add stop’
QGIS will do this for you with various plugins available to help.
Or use https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ with via points
thanks
DavidB
Houns
ill try those later
Google maps is nice and simple, available on all/most smartphones. I don’t use waze so don’t know if can plan multi stops with it, but know it’s good for live traffic updates and rerouting
Google maps needs to know the order of stops first doesn’t it? Rather than telling it all the stops and it orders them in the most efficient route for you?
Both of the above options need to know the order of the stops - you can drag and drop them to move them around, but still a manual task.
The automatic calculation is a feature I have been looking for too - it used to be in Autoroute back in the late 1990s, but not seen it since then!
There seems to be quite a few options on Google Play store.
Could try OsmAnd. Can create a route, with intermediate waypoints. Then it has an option for "Sort door-to-door", which should get the shortest route.
As others have said this is a quite a complex problem and companies that do multi-drop deliveries are probably paying quite a lot for their planning software
Have a read of this blog Best Free Route Planning Software With Unlimited Stops and try some of those
As route planning is not a easy problem and probably more realistically Google don't do if for free and no one if sinking VC money into the problem most companies providing this service need paying
routexl is free for up to 20 stops so you could start there.
www.roadwarrior.app
This is what I used to use, really good and simple to use. Integrates with google maps for navigation too.
Does what you need for sure.
It uses google maps and traffic to calculate arrival times for each stop on the fly too, so you can let someone know when you will arrive, and it was always accurate enough to not embarrass me arriving late all the time.
As others have said this is a quite a complex problem and companies that do multi-drop deliveries are probably paying quite a lot for their planning software
I've got a friend who works for UPS, they get given a road atlas. They have no official technology for planning their routes. He uses google maps for some of it on his phone but a lot of the time he just looks at the list and works it out in his head if he's familiar with the area. He usually has 90 - 120 drops a day
I’ve got a friend who works for UPS, they get given a road atlas
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, last time I looked as this properly was >5yrs ago and the software licences were 80k+
£10/month for Roadwarrior premium worked out at 41p per working for me. Seemed sensible to save me an hour of planning every morning, and knowing what time I would be at each client.
I never regretted paying for it.
ive been doing it daily for the last 2 weeks.
I now use a3 paper that I can see through.
do my days work and then overlay each sheet.
I then transfer it to one main sheet which I intend to use this coming week.
ill see how that goes.
I can see its a complex problem, but I thought someone would have come up with a mapping working solution by now?
As Graham above my wifey uses route xl for her business.
I can see its a complex problem, but I thought someone would have come up with a mapping working solution by now?
They have.
Roadwarrior does exactly what said you want.
You put in the addresses and the start point (and end point if needed) and it creates the best route to get it done. You click "next" and it opens up google maps and takes you there.
When you are done at that location, click "done" and "next" and google maps opens and takes you to the next location.
Is that not what you need ?
I can see its a complex problem, but I thought someone would have come up with a mapping working solution by now?
They have. It’s not free.
This is something I’d often wondered about, when I was driving long distances with satnav, although I never did multi-drop stuff, if I’d ever tried working in that field how I’d manage planning routes, as it’s not something I’m very good at. Glad to know there is something available, like Roadwarrior.
This dude looks into it with fantastic insight -
(He comes on stage at 12 minutes 10 - dodge everything before it). Essentially, with regard to the problem at hand, if you have 25 drops to do, for a computer to look at them all it's 25*24*23*22... *4*3*2*1 different routes to look at, which is a very large number of routes, and a human looking at a map with dots on will work out a reasonably efficient route quite quickly in comparison.
(He was a great speaker, it's a great lecture 🙂 ).
I used Routeware which will work well for a small number of points like you have but it's not a complete solution.
These things are only as good as the road network that they work off, which is why you should treat anything OSM based carefully.